As the title says, Don’t stop believing. I firmly believe in those words and I am not just talking about the song from Journey. As a person of faith, I know that if you do not give up, you will reap a harvest. The key to making it in most cases is just being faithful and having a vision. It might not be overnight but it will come in time.

That has been the story of Last Kodiak for some time. I have more vision for it than I have the resources to do the vision. It does not matter that there is not the things I need right now because the vision is a marathon, not a sprint. It is important to pace the run to make it through to the end.

It was with this position that I really tried to pull together Last Kodiak in the last few months. I landed in the United States from a decade out of the country. I had to see what could come together and what I could make happen. Progress has been made but it has not been at the speed that I wish it would have been. However, I am faithful to the process.

Why I believe in Last Kodiak!

It is more than just a website. It is a vision to get Americans out and about to see their own country. I have traveled the world and I have learned to love the United States. We have much to offer and we look past it every day. We have some of the greatest scenery, most amazing food, and easiest mode of travel anywhere in the world. We tend to take all that for granted.

Every morning, many of us drive right past dozens of restaurants that are cultural experiences. Many people would travel to try Kansas City barbecue or have some county fair food in Texas. The reason they don’t is we don’t tell them about it. America is full of great adventures besides the dozen “famous ones.” The goal is help people know about what is on the side streets as well as the big attractions.

When I lived out of the country, I would hear people say that “America does not have a culture.” Instead of being offended by this, I want to show the beauty of our culture and that there is things that makes us uniquely American. This is the right way to counter this false belief that many around the world holds.

I also have the conviction that much of the people that call themselves Americans do not really understand what being an American really means. People living in Maine don’t really know much about the experience that happens in American Samoa. The same is true of people in Seattle concerning the US Virgin Islands. Last Kodiak wants to change that. The mission to educate the population of our vast culture is not going to be easy.

The technical challenge ahead

The good news is you get a lot of traffic from American travelers. The bad news is that is very competitive. In other words, it is not an easy task to have a website based on American travel… not easy at all.

To date, there is only two articles that has broken a 1,000 organic views and a few others that went viral on Facebook. Otherwise, I am confronted with the task of trying to build things for future traffic. This is a very hard reality for someone trying to make a dent in the market of American travel.

In the world of marketing and SEO, a mythical score known as Domain Authority matters to people. It starts at 1 and goes to 100. The higher the better and as you go up, the ranking is harder to get. In January 2018, Last Kodiak set at 1 as a new website and as of today, it is sitting at 16. Not as good as it can be but there is worse places to be.

The good news about SEO is when it rains, it pours. If Google takes a liking to an article, it can get thousands of views in a month without much work. One article on Travel the Fire went from 30 views to over 1,200 a month a few months ago and has been the same ever since.

As I said, this is a marathon and that applies to SEO as well. It won’t come overnight. As the growth comes, the impact will come with it.

Don’t stop believing!

Realizing that the odds are against Last Kodiak to get top spots, I accept the challenge. I believe that getting 25,000 views organically is very possible but it will take some serious hard work. The pay off for it is worth it in the end.